This week has been genuinely, brilliantly chaotic in the best possible way. Meghan Markle has returned to television in the most Australian context imaginable, Harry called her mid-episode, Andrew is being stripped of yet another honour by a city that has had to invent a new legal mechanism to do so, the most senior aide at Buckingham Palace is departing and Harry apparently has opinions about this, and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands did something magnificent at WorldPride that no queen has ever done before.
There is something undeniably, wonderfully surreal about the Duchess of Sussex appearing as a mystery guest judge on MasterChef Australia, and last Sunday’s episode delivered every bit of the entertainment that description promises.
Meghan filmed her appearance during her April visit to Australia with Harry and aired on the 26th of July, stepping into the studio in a mid-length black linen dress to audible gasps from the remaining contestants. She was filling in for regular judge Andy Allen, who is on paternity leave. She was introduced by the beloved Poh Ling Yeow, who then asked the question on the tip of every royal watcher’s tongue: “Do I call you Duchess?”
“Oh, call me Meghan. Absolutely, yeah,” came the reply, without a moment’s hesitation.
Then, roughly ninety seconds later, Meghan set the contestants a challenge to prepare a dish “fit for a Duchess” using ingredients she had personally selected – honey, macadamia nuts, citrus, edible flowers and celeriac. The irony of declining the title and immediately deploying it as a challenge brief was not lost on anyone in the room or watching at home. Meghan appeared entirely unbothered by this contradiction, which is perhaps the most relatable thing she has done in years.
The ingredients, she revealed, were chosen because her children love them. She also shared during the episode that Archie and Lilibet are both devoted fans of celeriac, which is statistically impossible for children under ten but which we choose to believe because the alternative is that a duchess is lying to MasterChef.
Then, mid-judging, Harry appeared on FaceTime. The phone lit up, the contestants froze, the judges exchanged the expression of people who have just been ambushed by a call from a man they were not expecting, and Harry asked warmly whether he had interrupted anything. He had, in fact, interrupted the judging of a national cooking competition, but he did it very nicely.
Behind-the-scenes reports from the production are uniformly warm. Crew described Meghan as “so nice to all the crew,” with “a good sense of humour,” arriving with an entourage of only two people who were also apparently excellent company. This is, in the landscape of celebrity television appearances, quite the review.
If MasterChef was the week’s entertainment, the Sussex family holiday photographs were the week’s warmth.
Meghan shared a series of images from a summer holiday that included, most significantly, a visit to Althorp House in Northamptonshire, the Spencer family estate where Princess Diana grew up and where she is buried on a small island in the middle of the ornamental lake. Harry has visited every time he has been in the UK, but this appears to be Archie and Lilibet’s first documented visit to the place that holds their grandmother.
The photographs show Lilibet, now five, in the walled kitchen gardens at Althorp, her red hair grown dramatically long, a fringe framing her face, the rest loose past her shoulders. She is, in case you needed confirmation, absolutely gorgeous. Archie was photographed in the cockpit of what appears to be a decommissioned aircraft, entirely in his element, having apparently developed a new passion for aviation. The beach shots – Harry and Meghan with the children running ahead, have the warm, salty quality of a family at peace.
The Althorp photographs carry a weight beyond their surface warmth. Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother, has confirmed Harry and the family stayed at the estate. There were no cameras for that part of the trip, no announcements, no social media in the moment. Meghan posted it after the fact, as an Instagram holiday dump. Keen Royal watchers have observed in one photo both Harry and Archie are carrying flowers which could mean they were visiting Diana’s grave but this is unconfirmed.
Elsewhere this week, the City of London Corporation confirmed it is drafting a bill that would strip Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of his Freedom of the City of London, one of the last remaining honours in his name.
The Freedom was granted to him in 2012. In March this year, the Corporation stated publicly that the honour could not be revoked because no effective legal mechanism existed to do so. This, it has since transpired, was a polite way of saying the relevant law was, in the Corporation’s own words this week, “defective and defunct.” They are now building a new one specifically for the purpose. The bill will go before the Policy and Resources Committee in September.
To summarise where we are: Andrew has been stripped of his royal titles, his military affiliations, his royal patronages, his Order of the Garter, his Knight Grand Cross of the Victorian Order, his Freedom of the City of York, and his grace-and-favour home at Royal Lodge. He is now rattling around a farmhouse in Norfolk while the City of London invents new legislation to remove the last ceremonial honour he holds.
The thing about the Freedom of the City, it is worth noting, is that it is an ancient honour dating to medieval times, when Freemen of London had the right to drive sheep over London Bridge, carry a drawn sword in the City, and be hanged with a silken rope rather than a hempen one if found guilty of a capital offence. Whether Andrew has any current interest in the sheep provision is unknown.
In a story that is considerably more significant than its understated announcement suggests, Sir Clive Alderton, the Principal Private Secretary to King Charles and Queen Camilla, and the most senior operational figure in the Royal Household, has announced he will step down in May 2027 to coincide with his 60th birthday.
Sir Clive has been with the royal family for twenty years, first joining as Deputy Private Secretary to then-Prince Charles in 2006, taking a three-year posting as Ambassador to Morocco from 2012 to 2015, then returning as Principal Private Secretary, a role he has held for eleven years. He has navigated two of the most turbulent episodes of the modern monarchy: the Sussex departure and Andrew’s Epstein connections. He walked alongside the King as he accompanied the late Queen’s coffin to Westminster Abbey. He was there at the coronation. He is, in every meaningful sense, the person who keeps the palace running.
He is also, in the mythology of Harry’s memoir Spare, almost certainly “The Wasp.” Harry described The Wasp in those pages as “lithe, charming, arrogant, a ball of jazzy energy … great at pretending to be polite, even servile,” noting that if you pushed back on something, “he’d put you on his list.” He did not name Alderton. He gave no verification. Sir Clive has not commented on any of it, which is precisely what you would expect of a man who has spent twenty years declining to comment on anything.
The palace said the King and Queen were “deeply grateful to Clive for his tireless support and wise counsel over the years.” A friend of Sir Clive noted he would soon be spending “more time with his own family, rather than the Royal Family.” The recruitment process for his successor begins in spring or summer 2027, and both internal and external candidates will be considered.
A significant departure. One suspects the transition will be managed immaculately. It is, after all, what he does.
And finally, this week’s most historic royal moment came not from Windsor or Clarence House but from Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, where Queen Maxima of the Netherlands officially opened WorldPride 2026 on Saturday the 25th of July.
She became the first reigning queen in history to formally open a WorldPride celebration. An official opening, in person, with a sign in her hands reading “liefde kent geen grenzen” love knows no boundaries, surrounded by drag queens in the summer sunshine.
WorldPride is in Amsterdam for the first time this year, a particularly meaningful choice given the Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, twenty-five years ago. The mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, told the crowd: “Your Majesty, today you are not alone. You are here in the company of queens from all backgrounds. Welcome to the queens.”
Maxima’s outfit was a re-wear – a Natan dress and an oversized gilded laurel leaf headpiece by Dutch milliner Berry Rutjes, a creation inspired by the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne, originally worn to Royal Ascot in 2019. She had worn it that day in a carriage alongside Queen Elizabeth II. She wore it again here, in a park full of rainbow flags and thousands of people for whom the presence of a sitting queen at their celebration meant something real and lasting.
The hat alone deserves a paragraph. It was both enormous and gold! It is made of dozens of individual laurel leaves, and it sits on the head of a woman who has been wearing spectacular millinery for twenty years and still managed to produce a piece that made the front page of every European fashion desk. Maxima does not do things by halves.
A duchess who declined her title and immediately used it as a challenge brief, a man losing honours one by one while new legislation is written to take the last ones away, a twenty-year palace career drawing to a close, holiday photographs at a grandmother’s grave, and a queen in a golden hat making history in a park in Amsterdam. The Crown, this week, in every form it takes. Until next week, keep the tea piping hot and the tiaras polished.
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